deep thoughts

tiny breaking wave on the crescent beach / the view from the end of Water. St. / morning dew / snapdragon-ish yellow yellow wildflowers / a meadow of Queen Anne's Lace / I heart gulls / from inside a meadow / skinny, shaggalicious Winnie Dixon legs - early morning harbour side boardwalk

What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
T. S. Eliot

Transitions is not simply a manual on how to cope; rather, it is based on the theory of personal development that views transition as the natural process of disorientation and reorientation marking the turning points in the path go growth. Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to happen – until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole's tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird jolts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same. Although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the functions of transition times are the same. They are key times in the natural process of development and self renewal. Without an understanding of such natural times of transition, we are left impossibly hoping that change will bypass us and let us go on with our lives s before. If we have learned on thing, it is that change will happen – that change is the norm and somehow or other we will need to develop ways of dealing productively with it.

William Bridges / Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes / from Chapter 1 - The Need for Change

Not all those who wander are lost
J. R. Tolkien

Considering that we all have to deal with endings all our lives, most of us handle them poorly. This is in part because we misunderstand them and take them too seriously or not seriously enough. We take them too seriously by confusing them with finality – that's it, all over, never more, finished ! We see them as something without sequel, forgetting that they are the first phase of the transition process and a precognition of self-renewal. At the same time, we fail to take them seriously enough. Because they scare us, we try to avoid them.

William Bridges / Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes / from Chapter 5 - Endings

not wandering x stuck x lost = very stuck + very lost

I realize that I have been afraid to wander, afraid to wander ahead into my future, especially my future with a different address, without 29 Black Street (not the blog the home) and it's taken me a long time to solidify these thoughts (as is par for my course). By not allowing myself to really go to that place in my mind (& desires) where I do live somewhere else, walk somewhere else, do different things, see different people and live a much simpler, potentially easier, more stimulating life ...
& one that most likely will be without two senior pets (Bleet & Winnie) I have made myself feel incredibly stuck and incredibly lost. Desperate even. Despair. Saying goodbye to Bleet Thursday was a push, or a slap ... a reminder that change is happening with or without me so I best get with the program.

I used to have a copy of William Bridges book Transitions bought back at that other time, nearly 5 years ago to the day when I was also trying to wrap my mind around leaving 29 Black Street. I couldn't find the book so I bought another copy that and a copy of Gay Hendrick's book The Big Leap.

here's to new adventures, much more wandering & some very big leaping ;-)